Page 23 of Summers at the Saint
“What is your deal with my in-laws?” Traci demanded.
“You crossed over to the dark side when you married into that family,” Shannon insisted. “What they did to me was totally unfair. That kid, Hudson? He was at the pool nearly every day that summer. He swam like a fish. So how did he suddenly drown? And why did I get the blame? I was doing my goddamnjob,getting everyone out of that pool.”
“I don’t disagree,” Traci said quietly. “You got screwed over.”
“The old man paid off people to keep their mouths shut and look the other way after Hudson. There was no police investigation. It didn’t even make the news,” Shannon said.
Traci drained the last of her beer. “You’re still blaming me for something I had no control over. I’m not them, Shannon. Yes, I agree, the old man was and is a horrible person. And if it makes you feel any better, he’s dying and has nothing to do with the day-to-day at the Saint. Ric is also a piece of shit, but he’s on the real estate side of the business. He didn’t hire Olivia. I did. I’m the one running theSaint, and I’m the one that will see to it that Olivia and our other new hires, including Ric’s daughter Parrish, are treated fairly.”
“Riiiight,” Shannon drawled.
“Okay, I’m done here,” Traci said, standing up. She threw a ten-dollar bill onto the table. “By the way, if you want to check out the new dorm, be my guest. Gimme a heads-up and I’ll leave you a pass at the security gate.”
Shannon watched as Traci wove her way through the crowd of twenty- and thirtysomethings, still turning heads as she went. “See you next Tuesday,” she muttered.
CHAPTER 15
Thirty minutes later, Traci stood in the shower, trying to rinse the stink of cigarette smoke and beer out of her hair, and still fuming about the encounter with Shannon.
It was all so unfair. They’d grown up together, graduated from high school, gotten in and out of trouble together. They were both Ain’ts, from working-class families, living in the shadow of a five-star resort their families never could have afforded.
Traci stepped out of the shower, toweled off, and pulled on her nightgown. When she opened the bathroom door, Lola was crouched in front of it, waiting for her to emerge. She gave a short, happy bark, wagging her whole body in ecstasy. Traci scooped her up and deposited her onto the bed. Lola was a rescue, an anxious senior dog nobody wanted, part dachshund, part Velcro, sticking to her side for every waking hour she was at home.
She glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It would have been laughable, if it hadn’t been so pathetic—she and Shannon, meeting tonight at their old hangout, then home and in bed, alone, before ten o’clock.
Two decades later—oh, how the times had changed.
She and Shannon had planned that summer of ’02 in minute detail. Job one was to move away from home. They were both nineteen, with a year of community college under their belts. Job two was to land one of the prized lifeguard positions at the Saint andstart saving money for their own apartments. Job three was to meet a cute, rich guy. There was never a shortage of those sons of families who “summered” at the resort.
Things went according to the plan. At first. Traci and Shannon hadn’t just shared a room at the staff dorm, they’d shared everything, from clothes to confidences. Saint employees were specifically forbidden to consort with guests, but both of them had managed short-lived, furtive flings early in the summer.
But then everything changed, almost overnight on a Friday night. Armed with newly minted fake IDs, they’d gone to Pour Willy’s together, but Shannon had hooked up with a guy almost as soon as they’d entered the bar, leaving Traci to fend for herself.
She’d just come out of the bathroom and wasn’t looking where she was going; in fact, she was trying to zip up her Daisy Dukes—technically, they were Shannon’s shorts, which was why the zipper seemed to be stuck.
The next thing Traci knew, she’d run straight into a guy who was, unfortunately, holding two flimsy plastic cups of beer, which collapsed and splashed all over her. And him.
“Oh, geez, my bad,” he’d said, taking a step backward. He was four inches taller than her. He was wearing geeky Clark Kent–style horn-rimmed glasses, and dressed all wrong for a dive bar: khakis, navy blazer, an unknotted striped repp tie, and a button-down dress shirt that was now soaked in beer.
He’d stammered out an apology as he was gingerly mopping the beer off her boobs with an honest-to-Gawd handkerchief, and she’d started giggling, uncontrollably. “Oh man. I’m sorry. I, uh…”
Traci felt bad for the guy. Had he wandered in here from an undertakers’ convention?
“It’s okay. I think it was my fault ’cuz I wasn’t looking where I was going because I was trying to zip up my shorts.” She couldn’t help herself, she looked up at him and brazenly batted her eyelashes. “Maybe you could help me out?”
He blushed violently. “Uh, well, I’m not sure. I mean, now my hands are all sticky with beer, and I wouldn’t want…”
“Never mind,” she’d said sharply, abruptly turning her back on him and returning to the barstool she’d abandoned earlier. She’d made an outrageous play for the guy and he’d fumbled badly, and she felt totally humiliated.
Ten minutes later, she felt a light tap on her shoulder. It was Clark Kent again. He’d ditched the blazer, and the necktie.
“Hey. I think I kinda blew my shot back there.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Ya think?”
“I’m terrible at this kind of stuff,” he confessed. “I don’t have a single good pickup line, and zero smooth moves.”
“Sad but true,” Traci agreed.
